The Writing on the Wall

Professor Aeyal Gross teaches at the Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University. He also teaches regularly as a guest at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research and writing focuses on international human rights law and international humanitarian law. He has previously published a comparative study, co-edited with Colleen Flood, entitled The Right to Health at the Public/Private Divide (Cambridge, 2014).

• Introduction; 1. The ends and fictions of occupation: between fact and norm; 2. The indeterminacy of occupation: from conceptualism to the functional approach; 3. Indeterminacy and control in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; 4. The construction of a wall between The Hague and Jerusalem: humanitarian law or a Fata Morgana of humanitarian law; 5. The securitization of human rights: are human rights the emperor's new clothes of the international law of occupation?

'Developed in the 19th century as a temporary device to protect civilians, the law of occupation has more recently revealed a tendency to turn into a lasting instrument of disciplining populations. Under a humanitarian pretence, military rule slides into colonial sovereignty. In this insightful work Aeyal Gross discusses cases such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Tibet, and Crimea, and especially the long-standing occupation of Palestine, in order to reveal the paradoxes and hypocrisies of the law of occupation. His critique is sharp and incisive but also sympathetic and oriented from a purely conceptual to a more openly normative reading of the law. This is a wonderful reflection of the limits and possibilities of using a traditional legal concept in a changed world of complex international conflict.' Martti Koskenniemi, author of The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The rise and fall of international law 1870-1960